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Opinion Contributor

Ted Cruz wins for ‘We the People’

We also saw this earlier this year in Indiana, where regular folks rallied in a grass-roots campaign to defeat 36-year establishment incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar, replacing him in a landslide Republican primary with Richard Mourdock, a fresh-faced conservative committed to fiscal responsibility. As in Utah, grass-roots activists built the ground game to force 36-year incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch into the only primary challenge of his career. Challenger Dan Liljenquist forced Hatch to renew his commitment to conservative principles — both in his rhetoric and his Senate votes.

The continuing lesson to be learned from the Cruz and Mourdock victories is that government goes to those who show up. FreedomWorks for America alone saw our membership in Texas more than double in the last year. So we opened 50 campaign distribution centers across the state where limited-government activists circulated more than 125,000 door hangers, 20,000 yard signs and 9,000 bumper stickers. Volunteers made more than 1 million targeted phone calls encouraging voters to go to the polls. More than 16,000 activists showed up at our meeting, FreePAC in Dallas, last week to cheer on Cruz, a featured speaker.

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Perhaps just as important is the understanding in our grass-roots community that protecting our freedoms from government overreach is a marathon — not a sprint. These activists are focused on November, while also building networks and preparing for future political and policy battles.

Since last June, FreedomWorks has hosted 28 training sessions across Texas. We hit the big cities like Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. But this was a state-wide campaign – something the establishment tends to forget. We also held training sessions in New Braunfels, Burleson, Stephenville, Round Rock, Clear Lake, Kingwood, Rowlett, Flatonia and Boerne.

Indiana showed us that incumbency isn’t the ultimate qualification. Utah showed us that principles still matter. Texas showed us that victory can’t be bought.

An educated people are and always will be the greatest tool in a democracy. Disintermediation politics, empowering individuals from the bottom up, without centralized planning, is the future of U.S. politics and the only conceivable way that “We the People” can take back our seat at the table as citizen shareholders of our government.

Matt Kibbe (@mkibbe) is the president and chief executive officer of FreedomWorks and author of “Hostile Takeover: Resisting Centralized Government’s Stranglehold on America.”

Here is a very intelligent man who came from behind (had a one digit voter approval at one time), educated at Princeton, worked for the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, represented Texas before the Court, is a very successful lawyer, is articulate and a very good speaker. He's a Hispanic.

ASK HIM TO SPEAK AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION. HE WOULD BE A TREMENDOUS ASSET TO THIS CONVENTION.

It shows that Texans know how to vote to continue the good economic status of our state and to attempt to put Texans in Washington who will attempt to stabilize this country if the liberal states who are not doing well would only butt out and let the people who are concerned about our nation's debt and deficit run this country.

The Tea Party philosophy is in reality a return to the 19th Century view of the world in the same way that fundamentalist Islamists want to return to the days of the Caliphate. They have a simplistic and purist view of the Constitution. No government regulation of the market - i.e., a return to bare-knuckle capitalism is a founding principle. These so-called "idealists" actually believe in their puerile hearts that there is such a thing as a free market and we just have to get the government off its back. They are too naive to understand that an unregulated market led to the 2008 Crash and the loss of trillions of tax payer dollars. They are too caught up in their mantra of "liberty" to understand the extensive collusion on the part of the institutional investment community. The biggest problem we face today is that simplistic ideology is very appealing to a worried and disillusioned electorate. Failure to challenge the Tea Party movement at every opportunity is to invite the rise of a fascist state in America. Fascism would be a direct outcome of fuzzy thinking anarchists led by snake-oil salesman Rush Limbaugh and Fox’s dimwitted lapdog, Sarah Palin or pseudo-intellectual, Ted Cruz.. It can happen here.

Even if Obama wins, congress will be under control of the Tea Party. The Tea Party doesn't need the majority to change the direction of the country. They have already proven that they will not compromise with the liberal morons who have spent us nearly into the grave.

Cruz's win shows that in the primaries voters are still negligent and allowing a minority to decide their candidate. All it would take is a turnout, as in the general election, to show the Tparty for the minority they are. Instead we continue to allow them to deliver their choices to the general election where so many will vote their party no matter what.

It was the hard work and perseverance of Ted Cruz that took him to the victory. He got his message out, never waivered from his deep seated principles and he proved over and over again that he is a man of his word, worthy of respect and the help and support of Jim DeMint with Club for Growth and of course Freedomworks. Has a resume that many can only dream of.

Cruz's win shows you how many crazy people are in this country. And people wonder why the country is doing so bad. The teabaggers ( Brown Shirts ) and their extreme ideology will help destroy the country. Why don't the teabaggers start their own party and quit trying to destroy the one they are in!

I guess the people of Texas want less education for their children, more poverty and less or no healthcare for all or why would they vote for a lunatic like this guy. Nothing like voting against your own interest. Are all Texans, i.e. Republicans, morally bankrupt? It appears so.

"We the people" produced the runoff victory for Ted Cruz? Some of "the people" to be sure who were really active and committed ended up as the majority of the minority of eligible voters who participated in the election, but only with a lot of really important help from some with very deep pockets well outside the jurisdiction of anyone eligible to vote at all.

With all due respect, your history is somewhat asew. It was due to Barney Frank's legislation on housing that the housing crisis arose to begin with. It is due to the FACT: that out of control spending on the part of both parties, but especially since 2008 under Pelosi and Reid, and their massive spending increases that worsened the problem. It is due to excessively high corporate taxation, that our jobs are being shipped overseas.

Fascism is defined by the following: a radical nationalist political ideaology that depends on big government to promote National Unity. Look it up in Wickapedia or anywhere else for that matter. The TEA Party is a true grassroots effort to regin in the government and return control to the people, which is what our founders intended. Your suposition that the Constitution is a flexible interpretive document is as laughable as the Pirates of the Carribean analogy of the Pirate Code being more like guidelines.

I am not being mean, but you need to wake up and take real look at what is going on around you.

Cruz will represent the people of Texas very well indeed, and it is my hope that in time you will understand the true meaning and responsibility of being a Citizen of this great country. I am afraid that at this time you are on the wrong path my friend.

"It was due to Barney Frank's legislation on housing that the housing crisis arose to begin with."

This is true. Like a large portion of our national debt, including the trillions and trillions in failed social spending over the last 40 years, the housing crisis and its collapse was all about race and redistribution, much of it created by Frank and friends, and carried out by his extremely rich friends at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac who personally pocketed tens of millions from the arrangement.

I remember right after Obama got elected David Axelrod appeared on one of the Sunday talk shows and said that the Tea Party was just a flash in the pan. I wont last he said...so much for the prophet Axelrod.

The word ... "Party"... in the term, Tea Party, itself, does not refer to, "a political organization."

Rather, It refers to a celebration, a merry making, a barbecue party, if you will, where "we the people" will practice the terms of our Constitutional contract ... that was founded, FOR US, by our forefathers with our goverment.

They work for us, we are the employer, we are "the rising and the setting sun," for our employees!

These emplyees ... the President, the Congress and the state goverments will be made accountable to the people ... today, tommorrow and hereafter !

These "living gods" have had their way for far too long. The laws that they make for us, will have to apply to them ... too !

Their management of our tax dollars will have to have our approval.

Our debt will have to be fixed for the future of our children,

And lastly ... we are Democrats, Republicans, Indepenents, Libertarians and others who love our country.

That is why we are not a "political party," with conventions and rhetoric, but just the employers of our politicians. who have been stealing from and raping us for years !

We are now holding an Employment Search ... and we will be interviewing and evaluating new candidates for employment in our goverment.!

We do not OCCUPY anything, nor do we camp out on your lawn, fight your police or wreck your cities !

Those are your Facists and your divisive leaders like Barrack H. Obama !

nkirk15: Your accusation is based off of the misguided assessment that if the government isn't giving things to people, it is depriving them of it. The reason things like health care and education have the problems they have is because of government. If the government got out of these things, market forces would drive prices down. What else should the government provide its citizens that they could otherwise obtain in the free market? Food? TV's? Cell Phones? I'm pretty sure even poor people can obtain these things even though the government does not provide them.